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Oct. 12th, 2011 09:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickWatched Winter's Bone, a movie about a girl in rednecklandia trying to find her missing meth-cook father (or prove he's dead) so that the bail bondsman doesn't take the family's house and land for his failure to appear in court.
As a student of rednecklandia, this movie was very interesting. Some things in this film are astonishingly well-done. Costuming is excellent as are home exteriors and interiors. That stuff is first class, outstanding, true to life and realistic. They made a concerted effort.
Actors mostly have the correct faces, the right amount of wear and care showing in them. Only the young are pretty, which is as it should be. Actors look like real people, suitably shaped for normal, redneck humans. The faces *look* redneck, damn it, and they do a tolerable job of sounding redneck. On the whole, the film does well at the illusion... but the actors have too many teeth. All of 'em show signs of regular dental care. This is not what the teeth of ozark redneck meth cooks look like. For pete's sake, Teardrop (meth addicted uncle of Ree) has all his teeth. (He slurps his overfull coffee out the cup like people I know personally, which sold me on the character instantly.)
I am not an ozark redneck meth cook but I do live deep in the heart of rednecklandia and I for damn sure know what the teeth of people who grew up with very little money, unfloridated water, and irregular dental care look like.
The dogs, the everpresent generic and yappy dogs, dogs on chains, dogs in dog houses, dogs wandering around in the yard, dogs and dogs and dogs -- that's realistic as all hell. Wikipedia acts like it's a big deal to feed stale/spoiled food to the dog, but damn it, dogs don't have a lot of standards when it comes to food. Better than throwing it out, innit? You get the feeling that the wikipedia entry was written by someone who feeds dogs dog food instead of feeding dogs things that dogs will eat, a category somewhat broader and a lot more organically real than the packaged dog food you get at the store.
The yards with dead cars, the junk, the trampolines, the woodpiles, the casual poaching (you can tell they're poaching because they're not wearing blaze orange when hunting squirrels), the use of firearms by the very young, the completely shitty fencing on the fields, the clotheslines in use in winter, the wood smoke, all that is straight up.
The people playing bluegrass, they are singing a classic (High on a Mountain) when we meet 'em. They also do Fair and Tender Ladies is also a classic. I'm good, there. But the dude with the beard and the funny little black hat on the uke DOES NOT BELONG. He's not from around there, not at all. (It is possible to make him fit in less-well -- consider how it'd be if he were black -- but he is not passing as a local in the movie.) The other people do not have the "Not From Around Here" vibe going on in them. They pass.
Near the end of the film, there's a scene where Ree's brother and sister are playing on round bales. Now, surely, it is possible to play on round bales. My problem here is that I'm not sure whose round bales they are. They were plenty nice enough to feed to horses. But, Ree sent her horse away early on because they didn't have money to buy hay to feed the horse. They'd not be giving the horse away if they had all those round bales sitting around. So whose damn round bales were they?
I rewound to see if there'd been a change of venue somewhere that I missed, but the prior scene is Ree burning stuff in the 55 gallon drum at the house, a realistic way of getting rid of trash. The following scene is the ladies coming to Ree's house to take her to where her daddy was, and yet in between, presumably at the house, there are these round bales and the children. We know Ree has no damn money because she's always taking folded twenties from shirttail relatives who offer 'em and eating squirrels and such. Whose damn round bales are they? They can't belong to Ree's family because they would have fed them to the horse.
There is also a lot of plaid in this movie. I can't help but wonder if the reason for all the plaid is the scots heritage... (Plaid flannel quilties, plaid flannel shirts, etc.)
As a student of rednecklandia, this movie was very interesting. Some things in this film are astonishingly well-done. Costuming is excellent as are home exteriors and interiors. That stuff is first class, outstanding, true to life and realistic. They made a concerted effort.
Actors mostly have the correct faces, the right amount of wear and care showing in them. Only the young are pretty, which is as it should be. Actors look like real people, suitably shaped for normal, redneck humans. The faces *look* redneck, damn it, and they do a tolerable job of sounding redneck. On the whole, the film does well at the illusion... but the actors have too many teeth. All of 'em show signs of regular dental care. This is not what the teeth of ozark redneck meth cooks look like. For pete's sake, Teardrop (meth addicted uncle of Ree) has all his teeth. (He slurps his overfull coffee out the cup like people I know personally, which sold me on the character instantly.)
I am not an ozark redneck meth cook but I do live deep in the heart of rednecklandia and I for damn sure know what the teeth of people who grew up with very little money, unfloridated water, and irregular dental care look like.
The dogs, the everpresent generic and yappy dogs, dogs on chains, dogs in dog houses, dogs wandering around in the yard, dogs and dogs and dogs -- that's realistic as all hell. Wikipedia acts like it's a big deal to feed stale/spoiled food to the dog, but damn it, dogs don't have a lot of standards when it comes to food. Better than throwing it out, innit? You get the feeling that the wikipedia entry was written by someone who feeds dogs dog food instead of feeding dogs things that dogs will eat, a category somewhat broader and a lot more organically real than the packaged dog food you get at the store.
The yards with dead cars, the junk, the trampolines, the woodpiles, the casual poaching (you can tell they're poaching because they're not wearing blaze orange when hunting squirrels), the use of firearms by the very young, the completely shitty fencing on the fields, the clotheslines in use in winter, the wood smoke, all that is straight up.
The people playing bluegrass, they are singing a classic (High on a Mountain) when we meet 'em. They also do Fair and Tender Ladies is also a classic. I'm good, there. But the dude with the beard and the funny little black hat on the uke DOES NOT BELONG. He's not from around there, not at all. (It is possible to make him fit in less-well -- consider how it'd be if he were black -- but he is not passing as a local in the movie.) The other people do not have the "Not From Around Here" vibe going on in them. They pass.
Near the end of the film, there's a scene where Ree's brother and sister are playing on round bales. Now, surely, it is possible to play on round bales. My problem here is that I'm not sure whose round bales they are. They were plenty nice enough to feed to horses. But, Ree sent her horse away early on because they didn't have money to buy hay to feed the horse. They'd not be giving the horse away if they had all those round bales sitting around. So whose damn round bales were they?
I rewound to see if there'd been a change of venue somewhere that I missed, but the prior scene is Ree burning stuff in the 55 gallon drum at the house, a realistic way of getting rid of trash. The following scene is the ladies coming to Ree's house to take her to where her daddy was, and yet in between, presumably at the house, there are these round bales and the children. We know Ree has no damn money because she's always taking folded twenties from shirttail relatives who offer 'em and eating squirrels and such. Whose damn round bales are they? They can't belong to Ree's family because they would have fed them to the horse.
There is also a lot of plaid in this movie. I can't help but wonder if the reason for all the plaid is the scots heritage... (Plaid flannel quilties, plaid flannel shirts, etc.)
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no subject
Date: 2011-10-13 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-13 03:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-13 12:31 pm (UTC)Rabbit season is Oct. 23-Nov. 27, Dec. 13-23 and Dec. 27-Feb. 26 (4 daily, 8 possession).
no subject
Date: 2011-10-13 05:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-13 03:56 am (UTC)All things considered maybe the hay was in a neighbor's hayfield.
It would more'n likely be fescue, which can kill a horse.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-18 01:52 am (UTC)